I switched my wireless service to Wind Mobile. Here’s why

Network speeds are slower and spottier, but they’re good enough – especially for the price.

Wind Mobile Switch:

For Canadian cellphone users, it’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times. Prices for service remain sky-high, but a brief respite is currently appearing as big carriers deal with what’s known as a “double cohort.”

A larger-than-usual number of subscribers will see their wireless contracts expire in early June, thanks to regulations that took effect in 2013. Although they’re not explicitly banned, three-year contracts will effectively be dead as of June 3 since carriers will no longer be able to charge device subsidies after 24 months.

As a result, anyone who has already been on a contract for two years or more will be able to walk away with no penalties as of that date.

The carriers tried to fight the application of these rules to existing contracts, but the Federal Court of Appeal last week rejected their arguments. Now, deals are emerging. There has perhaps never been a better time for consumers to try and negotiate a deal, or to defect to another carrier. One estimate figures the double cohort could provide opportunities for up to 4 million Canadians.

It’s with this backdrop that I came to the decision to test out Wind Mobile, one of the newer wireless providers available in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.

Wind has been operating since 2009, after winning wireless licences in a government spectrum auction geared toward encouraging new startups. It’s now the country’s fourth largest carrier, with 800,000 subscribers.

Wind has had its ups and downs, including regulatory problems, tumultuous ownership and funding shortfalls. In recent months, a more upbeat attitude has seemed to settle in, with management saying it has emerged from its troubles as a stable business that is focused on the future. New government rules and regulations have also helped.

Wind has positioned itself as an alternative to the Big Three – Bell, Rogers and Telus – with lower prices and more generous usage of its network.

Any assessment of Wind’s service is really an assessment of that network. As a company that’s barely five years old, there’s no way it can match the quality of the Big Three, who often boast about having some of the best networks in the world. The question in reviewing Wind therefore has to be: is the network good enough?

Cellphone users are like snowflakes: no two are alike.

User Profiles

I thought I’d document my month-long test here, with a few caveats up front. This review won’t apply to all Canadians or even all Wind Mobile users because coverage differs in quality depending on geography.

Every cellphone user is also different. Some people like to do lots of video streaming, some don’t do any, for example, so there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all review.

I’d tried fellow startup Mobilicity a few years ago, not long after both companies launched. It was considerably cheaper than the Big Three at the time, but I quickly got frustrated with the quality of the service. I seemed to have dropped connections more frequently than not.

Hiccups are to be expected with a new provider, but it was evident that Mobilicity still had a long way to go before it could serve my needs. I don’t know what the company’s service is like these days, but I opted for Wind Mobile for this test because of that bad experience.

Here’s my usage profile: I live in Etobicoke, in the west end of Toronto, and I work at home. I have a landline, but I keep it unplugged except for radio interviews. I treat my cellphone as my only phone. With my Big Three plan, I was getting 400 local minutes, 100 North American minutes, unlimited texting and 1 GB of data, for $55 a month.

I’d been begging and pleading with my provider for months to increase my data cap, but not my bill. Knowing that more data costs the provider mere pennies and that prices are so much lower in other countries has made me staunchly resistant to paying more for my wireless service. Unfortunately, my carrier was just as opposed to granting me anything better.

I frequently travel downtown and occasionally leave the city, either for trips in Ontario or to the United States. I mainly use my phone to check email, weather, maps and movie showtimes, and to post to Twitter. I also send a lot of texts and probably make more phone calls than the average person – the perils of a freelance journalist.

My low usage cap had conditioned me away from certain activities. Streaming video, for example, has been a no-go. In fact, any kind of video is a data killer, so I’ve stayed away from it entirely. I’d even erased the Facebook app from my phone after finding it used too much data.

I’m generally using different phones all the time – it’s part of my job – but my preference is iPhones. I’m never on a contract and insist on unlocked phones, so much so that I urge everyone to buy their own phones and get them unlocked. It’s the best way to retain independence from carriers and maintain the ability to switch if and when better offers become available.

No contract signing here.

Signing Up

I had some preconceived notions about Wind prior to signing up. The company uses AWS wireless spectrum, which is in a high frequency that isn’t well suited to penetrating walls. When I was with Mobilicity, which uses the same spectrum, I often had service drop out while I was indoors. Subscribers to T-Mobile USA, which also uses the same frequencies, used to complain of the same problems.

Wind and Mobilicity customers also face a unique burden in the form of domestic roaming, which are extra fees they must pay when using their phone outside the carrier’s home coverage area. Given that both companies are relatively new with comparatively small networks, that means most of Canada. I wondered whether I’d be able to use my phone outside of Toronto and whether it would cost me a lot of money to do so.

Lastly, I wondered how fast Wind might be. The Big Three carriers are all using Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology and are delivering blazing download and upload speeds. Wind Mobile hasn’t yet made the jump to LTE, and it’s an open question as to when it will happen.

I signed up at a Wind kiosk in a mall near my house. It went smoothly, although I was miffed by the $25 fee for the SIM card. Wind advertises no activation fees, so I felt like I’d been misled. The Big Three might be known for all sorts of nickel-and-dime fees, but even they don’t charge that much for a SIM.

Nevertheless, Wind’s regular pricing more than makes up for it. I opted for the $35-a-month plan: unlimited nationwide talk and text, plus 2 GB of data, which is what I’d been wanting for months. As an extra bonus, I got a $150 credit for bringing my own phone that could be applied through a number of different options, such as worldwide text or North American calling.

I opted to double my data, to 4 GB, for 15 months. That’s quadruple what I was getting through my Big Three provider, at nearly half the price. The thought of that quickly erased the sting of the SIM card fee.

Still, I made a point of keeping my old account and number open. I wasn’t prepared to fully switch without knowing what I was getting into.

I popped the Wind SIM into my iPhone and fired it up. Then, because I’m a nerd, the first thing I did was a speed test. I was curious to see how the network was and whether it actually worked indoors.

To my surprise, I cracked about 3 megabits per second on the download side, and 1 Mbps with the upload. Make no mistake – that’s much, much slower than typical results on the Big Three, but it was better than I was expecting indoors. So far, so good.

I’m into Spotify now – too bad there’s no Taylor Swift on there.

Regular Usage

Over the next few days, I performed numerous speed tests. A few times I got downloads up around 7 Mbps, and sometimes down under 1 Mbps. Uploads rarely clocked in at much more than 2 Mbps. Most of the time, it was around 3 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. It was clear Wind is significantly slower – the question became: would I care?

In real terms, I kept using my phone the same way I always had: checking email, posting tweets, getting directions, buying movie tickets. Everything went relatively well, if slower.

I had a few dropped connections when deep inside buildings, but otherwise the AWS plague I was expecting didn’t materialize. My phone works perfectly even in my basement.

After a few days, the realization that I had more data started to sink in, and my behaviour started changing. I reinstalled the Facebook app on my phone. I checked Twitter more often. I even added the Sirius XM and Spotify apps. Over the past few weeks, I’ve actually gotten into music streaming – something I never expected to do.

I’ve even watched the occasional video. Shocking stuff.

It’s hard to put into words how liberating this change of mindset felt. It was like a nagging worry had been put to rest. That angst I normally felt in the latter half of the month, with my data limit approaching, was gone. Although Wind gives set caps, the company doesn’t charge overage fees if you exceed it, you just get a slower speed.

That’s something I haven’t been able to test and probably won’t for some time. I can’t imagine how I’ll go over 4 GB any time soon.

At the conclusion of this test, I’ve found I don’t care that music streaming is occasionally glitchy, or that email takes a few seconds to load. That inconvenience, although it does add up over time, doesn’t outweigh the piece of mind I’ve found in having so much more data to play with.

No roaming worries in Detroit, just urban blight.

Roam if You Want To

The wife and I took a trip out to Windsor about a week into my trial, which provided the perfect roaming test. I figured I’d keep using my phone the same as usual, both to test the connection and to see what it would end up costing me.

Windsor turned out to be more hit and miss than Toronto. Speeds either clocked in at the high or the low end, with less consistency in the mid-range. That was concerning, since it’s tough to develop a comfort with the service if it’s behaving erratically. I also lost the connection entirely a few times along the 401 highway, but it was there at rest stops.

We also popped over to Detroit for a Tigers game, which turned up some interesting results. Connection speeds were generally faster and more consistent once roaming on T-Mobile. That’s not surprising, given the U.S. provider has an older and stronger network.

Again, I kept using my phone as normal – checking email and posting pictures to Facebook. That’s not something I’d ever have considered with my Big Three connection, given the punitive U.S. roaming charges.

All told, roaming quality satisfied my expectations. When I got my bill a few weeks later, I found my data usage over that weekend had cost a little under $3. That’s peanuts.

I had another opportunity to test roaming on a visit to Silicon Valley last week. This time, I switched between using my Wind and Roam Mobility accounts. Two days on Roam cost me about $8 (before tax) and about $7 on Wind.

Both companies use the same roaming partner – T-Mobile – but Roam gave me LTE speeds. The costs were about the same, but Roam’s extra speed was certainly better.

On future trips, it’ll be a question of tradeoffs: do I go with the faster Roam speeds and thereby switch to a different phone number, or do I swallow the slower speed in exchange for keeping my regular number?

Camp Goodenough isn’t just a camp in Australia. But it’s that too.

The Bottom Line

I also conducted a side experiment with the Big Three carriers while testing Wind.

In preparation for the coming double cohort, the so-called flanker brands – Fido, Koodo and Virgin – started offering promotional deal for customers with their own phones a few weeks ago, consisting of unlimited nation-wide calling and 1 GB of data for $45.

I checked to see if my Big Three carrier would provide me with the 2GB I had long been seeking to keep me from switching. To my surprise, the carrier came through with an offer of 2GB and unlimited local calling for the same $55 I had been paying. It was a pyrrhic victory, though, since switching would have meant losing my North American calling.

I asked if the local calling offer could be upped to nationwide minutes, but nope, no dice, so I switched to the flanker brand’s cheaper $45 promo deal. A week later, I called the flanker’s retentions department and offered to pay $10 more, back up to $55, for 2 GB.

I mentioned I was simultaneously testing Wind, and that I had to cancel one service or the other. Again, no dice. The retentions agent told me I had to be a customer for at least six months to qualify for special bonuses.

After much consideration and soul searching – would I miss those faster speeds? – I decided to cancel my service with the flanker brand and move my phone number over to Wind. I wasn’t completely confident in the decision to abandon the Big Three once and for all, but I was willing to take the chance.

But our story doesn’t end there. When I called Wind to finally switch my number over, customer service told me it could take three hours to do so, and if it wasn’t done within that time frame, I should call back. Sure enough, three hours passed so I called, only to be told an error had been made and that it could take another 48 hours.

My wife had made the same earlier switch from her Big Three provider to a different flanker brand and the number port took all of 10 minutes, so this made me angry. A supervisor told me he would speed up the transfer and tacked a $20 credit onto my account for the inconvenience.

Two days later, my number still hadn’t made the switch, so I asked Wind’s tech support via Twitter what the problem was. The representative on the other end couldn’t explain, nor could he say when the port would ultimately take place.

And so emerged the third prong of the wireless business – price, network and customer service, which Wind was failing badly on. The price was great, the network was okay, but the service was bordering on inept.

That sparked my earlier trepidation about switching, so I reneged. I called Wind again with the intention of cancelling the port request and my service. A retentions agent asked me to give him five minutes, and wouldn’t you know it, he managed to instantaneously port my number.

That seems like a win, but I’m not so sure. I’m now suspicious of Wind’s customer service – if they can make a number port happen that fast when a customer threatens to quit, why does it take so long otherwise?

There are clearly problems with Wind, but in the end I decided to park my service with them, at least for now. The extreme irony is that mere days after this whole debacle, the flanker brand I had switched away from introduced yet another new promo deal – 2 GB of data with unlimited calling and texting for $55.

That’s the exact same deal customer retentions had been unwilling to give me just a few days earlier. If they had, I probably wouldn’t have turned my Wind test into a full-on defection.

Customer service snafus aside, Wind does seem to have captured just the right aspect of its offering in its current marketing efforts. The company is pushing “piece of mind” as its main selling point, and on that front I couldn’t agree more. My usage mindset changed considerably over the month-long trial, to the point where I was no longer worrying about blowing through my cap and paying through the nose for it.

There’s no doubt Wind Mobile’s coverage and network aren’t as fast or robust as its Big Three competitors, but for my usage needs they were good enough. The fact that service is priced so much lower is what sealed the deal, even if customer service almost killed it.

I’m going on the expectation that the quality and speed will only improve, since Wind has acquired more spectrum and could soon make deals with other carriers for better coverage.

It’s curious that my original Big Three provider made me a deal only when there was a better advertised plan from fellow Big Three carrier, yet no deal was offered when I threatened to switch to Wind. That pretty much tells the story of how Bell, Rogers and Telus view the upstart – it’s not yet a threat, so they pretend it doesn’t exist.

For my money, things will get interesting when and if Wind is able to offer faster LTE service. Only then will the Big Three’s caps go up and prices go down. Until then, consumers have to make a choice between one or the other.

UPDATE AUG. 18: After a few more months of using Wind’s service, I decided to go crawling back to the Big Three on my hands and knees. Here’s a post on that.

30 Comments on I switched my wireless service to Wind Mobile. Here’s why

Can you tell me what it has been like for you to use iMessage, Visual Voicemail, or Facetime over cellular? Those are the 3 things keeping me from Wind. Visual Voicemail is immensely better than traditional dial-in voicemail and it would be a big loss for me I think.

Good questions! iMessage has been perfectly fine and I totally agree that visual voicemail is way better. However, I’ve found that I don’t miss it at all because I get so few voice mails (only my mother leaves them). I haven’t actually tried FaceTime, although it’s probably directly tied to the current quality of the connection. At less than 3 Mbps, it’s a crap shoot, but if you’re lucky enough to be in an area where you’re getting 5 Mbps+ then it should be pretty good.

Wind doesn’t support Visual Voicemail AFAIK but it will show a red dot on the bottom voicemail tab of the Phone app. I use the bottom recents tab to see who called and can call them back from there. There is also a button for missed calls to see only those if you get a lot of calls. Wind will also send you a text message telling you about a voicemail, what number it was from and how long the voicemail is in seconds. You can click on a link to call for your message(s).

I don’t get a lot of calls, only from a small number of people. I get more junk/spam calls offering cruises, flights and hotels that I usually let unknown calls go to voicemail and deal with them later.

FaceTime video can be a bit spotty but audio has worked the few times I’ve used FaceTime video or audio. When I have used FaceTime I’ve usually had wifi available so I can’t give more info than that. I find FaceTime more a gimmick but I don’t need to see the person I’m talking to. Would be great for kids seeing parents, grandparents or a spouse/significant other seeing their SO who is a distance away.

For connectivity, I’ve had a few malls and stores where I lose signal after I get so far into the mall. It’s a bit of a pain for me but the difference in cost makes it a trade off I can live with. Over the time I’ve been with Wind, the places I go have improved in reception. To me this is just growing pains.

I remember my first cell phone in the 90’s with Rogers was along the same lines. Service area was limited and I’d get dropped calls in certain areas or stores. The more things change….

I did the same thing a couple of years back, and I had a very similar experience to what you describe. However, the nail in the coffin for me was the “home” and “Away” networks. I frequently travel to the fringes of the GTA, and I’d be forced to roam on Rogers network. On its own, that wasn’t a deal breaker, however it would take several minutes between dropping the “home” signal until it picked up the “away” signal, which was really irritating.

I also found that the spectrum it used wasn’t able to penetrate inside in some places very well, especially the PATH, where the Big 3 had no issue. Maybe this has changed now with newer devices that use more spectrum? I don’t know.

If I didn’t need to rely on my phone for work, I would have more seriously considered it, for sure. The price was just too low not to make it a serious contender, even with the inferior network.

Nice article. I’ve got an unlocked iPhone 5S for a year and a half, an old Nokia phone before that with Wind. Been on Telus before Wind, Bell before Telus and Rogers ages ago.

I’ve been on Wind in Edmonton since early 2010 and am on their Holiday Miracle plan since late 2010. I pay $40 a month for 5GB of data before it slows, unlimited calling across Canada and the US at a 2 hour per call limit and unlimited world wide texting. On the big three it would be a minimum of double that.

Personally, I can’t stand Rogers and I refuse to use roaming on Wind that might benefit Rogers, although Telus is now a roaming partner too. I’m mostly within metro Edmonton and if I travel outside of Winds area I simply lose service. If I had an emergency outside of Winds coverage area, I could simply turn on roaming and use whichever carrier was available. Works for me. Your mileage may vary.

I’ve told lots of people about Wind, advantages and disadvantages. Wind is not for everyone but it could handle a lot more. For those that travel a lot outside of Winds area, it is better on the big 3. If you are mostly in a Wind zone, try it and see if works for you and your wallet.

I don’t need customer service often but their phone customer service is a bit off. Best advice I can give is try using their kiosk staff to solve problems. Worked for me anyway.

Not affiliated with Wind, don’t work for them, just a mostly satisfied customer that is happy with my only phone provider. I’d love more speed but a larger coverage area would be better. I’ve been using an app called CoverageMap from Root Metrics to map out Winds actual coverage area in Edmonton and it is bigger than published coverage maps indicate. This may be due to holding onto a call or line of site and height of terrain of the area. There are other apps that do coverage mapping but I like the simplicity and information display of this app.

I do hope more people get with Wind. I’m looking forward to increased bandwidth availability even if it means likely upgrading to a new phone when it becomes available.

I switched to Wind for about 2 months but had to switch back to a big 3 because of coverage issues. I work in downtown Ottawa and Wind did not penetrate my office building so once I went to work I could get no calls. At my house in Kanata I could get service in my driveway but once I went inside to the living room I could only get service on the couch cushion closest to the street. Any father away and I would get no service.

I had two business trips during those 2 months, one to San Francisco where WInd worked great and the other to Salt Lake City where it was spotty as best.

I’d be using extreme caution before switching to Wind. I’d want to get a friend that is subscribed to the service to test out the places that I spend most of my time before I signed a contract.

I live in ottawa n have no problems with Wind! I find that with wind the type of cell you use will also dictate the signal strength. On my Nexus 5 i get signals on wind where my wifes cell doesnt. She uses a galaxy nexus. So i think for aws the cell makes the difference nit many places in ottawa i dont get a signal

I can never understand why people insist on sticking with the Big 3. I’ll be the first to admit that Wind isn’t great and is certainly not appropriate for all users. But most users who live in urban areas, rarely venture outside Wind’s coverage (especially in the GTA, where the coverage zone is quite large) on a regular basis, and they rarely consume media in such high bandwidth that they need LTE.

For me, the peace of mind, of simply being able to use my phone without worrying about the time of day or overage charges is what makes Wind absolutely awesome. And even with travelling and lots of roaming, Wind still seems to work out cheaper for me in the long run. I put the money saved towards buying unlocked smartphones, which saves me even more on international travel.

I was lured by Wind’s packages a week ago and finally made the switched from my Fido plan that i’ve had for about 5 years. It was a huge mistake. Service was terrible, often taking minutes to even send a text message.

Don’t try and fool other people into thinking that Wind has acceptable service. If you want any level of quality and speed, don’t switch to Wind.

The Rogers contract is up and I am used to the Iphone. Have a 4 which is now archaic and researching the 5S. Fed up trying to negotiate with Rogers and Bell on a contract. Friend bought his iphone 5S outright and went with Wind. But I get impatient and want the texting to work fast as with email that I use on the run between work and personal accounts. I live in Ottawa if reception is an issue.

You shouldn’t have any issues texting. iMessages work too, however when you send an iMessage it won’t appear as your phone number, instead it will come up as sent by the imessage account that you set in your settings.

Great read, i’m very happy i found this article. Thanks for putting it together! I live in Windsor, and i have heard both good/bad things so far. I am told that they are thinking of removing roaming fees for areas that don’t have coverage, but this just might be a selling gimmick?

I am thimking of switching to WIND but there are so many mixed reviews which makes
Me unsure. I have been with one of the Big3 for many many years and I just about had enough!!! Time for me to move on, coz since the govt haf banned their asses from the 3 year contracts, my bill just keeps getting higher and higher on s monthly basis,can’t don’t his anymore and their customer service also got worst!!!…had enough of these thieves/rip offs!??

I had Wind mobile service only for 4 months, the worst mistake of my life. They slapped me with 3000 dollar bill for calls I haven’t made. Talking to their customer service is a disaster. They explained to me every call I made through viber application is counted as if i am calling long distance from my cell phone. And they said they are not responsible for the ”apps fault”. To me they are big scammers who has a licence fromCRTC to rob innocent people. At least with big three you can talk to reasonable people when you have issues and try to fix it. The wind people use threatening language and one is speaking different than the other for same issue. Stay away from Wind unless you are blown away buy huge scam.

I am so dissatisfied with wind…I use my phone a lot maybe using my aloted half way through the month ….I will except that but after that I get maybey 5kbs…I can not even go on FB…I also recorded one of there employees telling me to be more responsible and limit my usage….non of their business in the first place how I use my time and is fair usage policy say after u slow down it will become non existent???? I will be changing shortly and also may post my conversation where they lie to me on YouTube…If you want like limited service to non go wind….

I have been with Wind Mobile for around 5 years now. Started with a wireless internet gadget, gradually adding three more phones: one in Toronto, one in KW, one in Calgary. Pricing is unbeatable, pooling discount Better Together makes it even more attractive. Connection speed and reliability have been good enough for all those years and improving. Yes, there were times like the ice storm in GTA when their service was off for longer than the big ones, but generally it’s livable. I intend on staying with them.

Both reviews were bang on giving Wind a more than fare chance. Being in Vancouver I transitioned from Chatr (Fido/Rogers) to Wind on a Back-to-School promo plan of $35. & a better smartphone for unlimited (almost) everything. I began regretting this switch 3 months into the 2 year agreement. Based on talk usage mostly, there are multiple areas in the city where the network changed over to Telus roaming. I’m talking about mostly busy/popular locations in Vancouver. Also in Wind zones such as Squamish. Either my phone automatically switched to Telus or Wind Away, while I was always in Wind home geography. Reporting this numerous times to customer service and to in-store staff, there’s always the same answer of “they’re aware of these issues and that the network is improving”. Well, it’s now over a year into my contract and I’ve yet to notice any improvements in these Local Vancouver roaming zones!? I hope there’s a network carriers that offers an incentive to absorb (my) remaining contract to to migrate my business. Either way, I’ll probably go back to Chatr, given that I was with them prior with none of these issues. I’ll pay more with the add-ons to match what I currently have however, I will have the stronger network therefore eliminate unnecessary roaming chargers & no network situations.

Worst mobile phone company I have ever dealt with. Extremely poor connectivity even in my own home I cannot get service probably 50% of the time, Tech support says “it should work, your in a good reception area”. worthless overseas packages, I ended up with a bill for over $200.00 and I couldnt even Text home to Canada or call home. I was advised also to turn off the roaming function or I would be charged $0.10 per minute, every minute. So the plan and the ability to use it was useless, NO REFUND after I got home and complained about no service with the overseas plan. The cheap rates are worthless if the phone doesnt work. I will advise every one that I speak to about cell phones, NOT to use Wind as their carrier’
Bob Freeman, Welland Ont Can.

I tried Wind Mobile, but it doesn’t work on my work’s street, Caldwell Ave in Ottawa. Very poor coverage indeed. Went back to Fido. I pay a bit more but my phone is working! Why pay less for a Wind phone which is always Wind Away (out of range)!

I live in the belleville ont area…. thinking about switching to wind…. anybody here have this phone service and if you do what issues do you have with them. … and is it true that they piggyback on Telus towers?

I got a Wind Mobile phone for my granddaughter for security reasons. Her mom has the ability to remain in contact with her at all times. She is using her phone in Milton, Ontario without any service problems. In addition she also uses it in Mississauga, Ontario and Brampton, Ontario with excellent reception and service.

It seems to me now as a personal option and rid myself of Virgin Mobile and Rogers ( used by my wife). It is simply a great option to save money.

Wind will work for my personal situation. Your situation may differ so please do your own DD!